Feinstein's potential re-election in 2006 for another six years is backed by 56 percent of California's voters, up from 53 percent in February. That's even higher than the 54 percent who like the job she's doing as the California's senior U.S. senator.

"She's probably regained her mantle as California's most popular politician, which she gave up briefly to Arnold Schwarzenegger," said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll.

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That popularity was highlighted in the poll's head-to-head election matchup with the governor. Feinstein had a 62 percent to 32 percent lead over Schwarzenegger in the hypothetical election, pulling 86 percent of the Democratic votes, 66 percent of the nonpartisan backing and a surprisingly strong 29 percent support from Republicans.

Feinstein is the choice of 56 percent of those surveyed to 38 percent for Rice, who is a former Stanford provost.

Neither Schwarzenegger nor Rice has given any indication that they are willing to challenge Feinstein, but the matchups show Feinstein's continuing popularity in the state, DiCamillo said.

"We wanted to see how strong Feinstein was against Republicans who were extremely well-known," he said. "You could imagine what the numbers would have been against a Republican no one had heard of."

No Republicans have indicated they're considering a race against Feinstein, who turned 72 last week. Although there had been rumors that the former San Francisco mayor was thinking about retirement, she's raising money for a re-election bid and saying publicly that she's eager to run again.

Feinstein, who was elected to the Senate in 1992, is widely viewed as one of the Senate's moderates.

That's one reason 25 percent of the state's Republicans are inclined to re-elect her, as are 32 percent of the voters who consider themselves conservative and 62 percent of the nonpartisan voters.

But Boxer hasn't been hurt by either her image as a strongly partisan Democratic attack dog or her outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq. The senator easily won a third six-year term last year against former California Secretary of State Bill Jones and now finds that 47 percent of the state's voters approve of the job she's doing in the Senate, while 30 percent are unhappy with her work in Washington.

The poll is based on a survey conducted from June 13-19 of 711 registered voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

Field Poll
Voters approve of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's job performance and are likely
to return her to office, according to the Field Poll.
Job performance
Approve: 54%
Disapprove: 26%
No opinion: 20%
Re-elect Feinstein
Inclined: 56%
Not inclined: 37%
No opinion: 7%
Results based on telephone interviews conducted in English and Spanish
with 711 registered voters June 13-19. The sampling error is plus or minus 3.6
percentage points.
Source: Field Research Corp.
The Chronicle

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